Are You Using your CRM to Boost Sales?

If you have a CRM platform, but aren’t sure what the benefits of using it are, then you haven’t been maximizing its power. This is the moment to take a long, hard look at your sales/marketing goals, and how your team is using the CRM to manifest them.

If you are simply using your CRM as your online database of contacts, you’re doing it wrong. Of course, a CRM is great for storing contact information in an organized way, but it does SO much more. It is designed for so much more than being an online information locker, especially integrated software like GreenRope.

A CRM is not just about your pipeline anymore; it is about monitoring and nurturing relationships with current and potential clients. Your CRM is a place to track interactions, view their activities, organize big data, and so much more. Your CRM is the foundation for providing a top-notch customer experience.

In one of my previous blog posts, The Customer Experience Explained, I discuss how technology is a key element in providing a great customer experience. Here’s how:

With CRM/Integrated software, you can:

Organize contacts

Track and schedule activities and tasks

Automate workflows

Track webpages visited

View reads and clicks

Automate your marketing

Engage socially

Capture leads

Score leads

Manage support cases

Surveys

Increase revenue and boost sales

Organize Contacts: A CRM lets you organize contacts in a way that that an Excel spreadsheet and Rolodex cannot. All of your contacts and their information are housed in one location, allowing for easy access and manageability. Well-organized information increases efficiency by saving you time and boosting productivity.

Track and Schedule Activities: Input all of your engagements, as well as schedule and assign upcoming tasks and follow-ups. By tracking your activities/ interactions, your sales team is able to view what is being said, as well as note specific details about the contact to help in the sales process. This gives you and anyone working with your contacts the knowledge and power to better connect and serve based on that contact’s needs and previous engagements with your brand. The result of all this integration is better customer experience.

Organize Automate Workflows: Customize your workflows and let them automatically guide your sales process. By triggering automatic workflows, your sales team is alerted when tasks/activities assigned to them are due. This saves your team time by automatically inputting preset tasks and activities to be completed.

Track Webpages Visited: Know what your contacts are looking at, and where they are spending most of their time on your website. This knowledge informs you of what your lead/customer’s interests. This data is great for lead nurturing, and sending them specific information relevant to the pages/topics they explore on your website. The more you know about how your contacts engage with your brand, the better prepared you are to provide them with the information they want, when they want it.

View Reads & Reads: Email campaigns are a key element in digital marketing. However, if you are going to email, you better track your efforts. Analyze who is opening your emails, what recipients clicked on, what browsers they used to view your emails. All of this information is not only good for evaluating the success of your campaigns, but also for obtaining important information about your contacts’ engagement with your brand’s campaigns.

Automate your Marketing:Automate your marketing with auto-responders and drip campaigns. Automation lets your nurture your leads in an efficient and effective way. Auto-responders are emails that are automatically sent to a contact that has filled out a signup form on your website. Say goodbye to manually importing contacts into your CRM, and sending one time emails each time someone inputs their information into your forms.

Organize Contacts Engage Socially:Post to all of your social networks, find engaging conversations, and track your social efforts with an integrated CRM. Social media is no longer an ‘extra’ item, it must be part of your digital marketing campaign. It is important to get the whole scope of how your contacts are reacting and engaging with your brand. Knowing how they engage with your over social media, and what they are saying about you gives you a lot of insight into that contact. Use this information to build a better relationship with your clients both on and offline.

Organize Capture Leads:Capture leads with integrated and easy-to-use signup forms and landing pages. Once a person enters their information into a signup form they are automatically dropped into your CRM, and can start being sent drip campaigns, trigger workflows, etc. This integration alleviates the need to manually enter a contact into your CRM.

Score Leads:The ability to score your leads lets your sales team know which of your contacts are hot-to-trot. The more points they acquire the more likely they are to convert. Any complete CRM (GreenRope) has the ability to set your scoring model based on activities, behaviors and demographics. Save time and increase your sales by knowing who is most likely to convert ahead of time.

Predictive Analytics:Predictive analytics is a rather new feature; GreenRope remains the only out of the box CRM to include this feature at no extra charge. Predictive analytics take your lead scoring, as well as data from past conversions and automatically predict which contacts in your CRM are most likely to convert at each stage of the buying process. Again, save time and increase revenue by focusing on the contacts most likely to purchase first.

Ticketing: Ticketing or case management is a tool used to manage your support and customer feedback, issues, and more. Let’s say one of your clients has feedback for your company. If they fill out a ticket on your website, that information is assigned to one of your support members, and stored as data in your CRM. That way, your sales or marketing team can make use of this information for future sales or marketing efforts with that particular contact or the organization as a whole.

Tickets may also trigger workflows, notifying the sales team that the ticket opener needs a follow up. Again, this keeps you organized and well equipped to best service your clients and customers.

Surveys: Surveys are a great way to find out feedback about your company and its offerings. A CRM with the ability to create and collect survey data ensures that all responses are stored with the respective contact in your CRM. Surveys are a cost-friendly way to gather information about your clients and customer base, so that you are better able to understand and meet their needs. Results? Better customer experience.

Many CRMs today do not contain many of these features, even though each and every one is a critical element in both your sales and marketing efforts. Integrating CRM into your business processes sets the foundation for a better customer experience resulting in increased productivity, improved sales, and growing revenues.

The most competitive companies are focusing more and more on the CX with their ability to obtain a comprehensive, real-time view of their customers.

With integrated platforms, like GreenRope, your business is able to rise from sales mediocrity. Instead of focusing on your company’s offerings, a CRM with the features above lets you concentrate and address what is important to your customer. It’s a better way of selling, don’t you think?

Not every customer is created equal, just like each pitch you make, each engagement you have should be aimed at whom you are speaking with. A CRM lets a sales team better understand their customers, and an informed sales force provides better service than one that is disconnected.

Now let’s revisit that long, hard look at your goals. Your goal should be to put the customer on center stage. When you focus on the customer instead of the sales, you build a deeper relationship, develop loyalty, and ultimately boost your sales. It’s a win-win!